


Despair

by Shevron



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 08:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21250787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shevron/pseuds/Shevron
Summary: A short halloween-story about fear, terror and despair.





	Despair

**Author's Note:**

> This work was beta-read by the generous ArdentFox from the Bad Guy Cafe.  
Thank you, without you this wouldn´t be possible!

_"Revenge is an instinctive force to avoid pain._   
_ Destroy your opponent and he can never hurt you again._   
_ But the question is how to implement it:_   
_ Simply kill your tormentor without him seeing it coming? Any animal can do that._   
_ Fear is indeed powerful, but over as soon as you get caught._   
_ Torture, on the other paw, is a long-neglected art..._   
_ You have to be careful and methodical, but you must not give in to your impulses._   
_ They have to beg for their end..._   
_ To make your nemesis and all its family see you as a personification of fear and terror, even beyond death, is revenge in its most glorious form."_

\--Quote from Professor Dr. Andrew G. Clawers, former university principal, convicted murderer in 36 cases.  
He tracked down all the members of the gang Hellpaws and tortured each of them for days until death after they attacked his daughter on her way home, raped and then buried her alive.  
His crusade lasted for 10 years and after the end of the last Hellpaw, he turned himself in to the police.

Since that time, this case of vigilante-justice had raised the question of whether the victim's deeds should be taken into account in sentencing, as many animals felt sympathy for the offender.

But the extent of the creativity of the torture methods used was so worrying that every effort was made to keep them secret. Nevertheless, excerpts were leaked and came to the public’s attention, which led to a new subculture of the underworld. This subculture was detested by most creatures beyond even the events that spawned it…

They called themselves ‘Fearfans’ and they lived it up to the last breath. Only usually not to their own…

For the past 3 months there had been meetings of Fearfans every week. Of course, always in new places that were communicated to those involved only just a few minutes before.  
But every Saturday evening, when most of the animals were free, it became harder and harder to identify such animals out of the crowd.

Each meeting was always about who made the next step up, and just as at the previous meetings, the ‘object of demonstration’ did not survive the presentation.

Understandably, the entire ZPD was anxious to track down the next meeting and hand over the members of these events to the judiciary...

Now it was Saturday again, and every animal in the ZPD was on the streets, keeping eyes, ears, and even noses open for even the most inconspicuous hint of the Fearfans.

Judy looked up into the sky and the first reds began to crawl through the blue.  
"Not too much longer now..."  
"I know."

They were in one of the scruffier quarters of the city where countless vacant warehouses and shops were located, hoping to be able to find more evidence in such a desolate area, more so than in the busy metropolitan areas.

With every step she took, her muscles tightened more and more as the sky grew redder and darker.  
Judy knew she needed to relax a bit, or she would not really be able to concentrate. So she paused to consciously take three deep breaths and Nick stopped by her side and looked around her.

Reflexively, her ears rose sharply and pointed toward a building across the street.  
Nick responded with his usual routine and gently pulled her into the shadows of a nearby entrance.

"What did you hear?"  
"Steps."  
He gave a quick status message to Clawhauser in the station before carefully approaching the building.

She pressed her ear to the door and Nick held his weapon ready.  
"Something is going on there. I can´t pinpoint it. But no voices and no steps."

"Well."  
With that they carefully opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit entrance area of the former shop.  
Judy, too, held her gun in front of her while Nick kept an eye fixed on her ears.  
She led him behind the counter and there was a hatch in the floor.  
Judy knelt down and used her ears again, like a stethoscope, to hear if anyone was down there, but she just heard the hum of an aggregate. Maybe the cooling for an old cold-storage or wine cellar.

Both got into position and Nick opened the hatch with a quick jerk.  
At the foot of the stairs, nothing was stirring and after a while Judy began the descent, while Nick covered her from above.

At the bottom, she saw a long dimly lit corridor, which quickly widened considerably, until they stood in a large room, from which two normal and one seemingly-thick insulated door came off.  
The latter was open a crack.  
With a short pawsign, Nick made her understand that they should first check this door.

Judy huddled against the wall beside the door, while Nick stood in front of the door, holding his paw over the handle.

Without making a sound, he formed the three with his lips ...  
Then the two...  
The one…  
Before he could press his paw down to open the door completely, there rang a loud noise and it jumped open, against Nick's snout.  
Judy raised her weapon, but was hit by a hoof and pressed against the wall.  
It happened so fast and unexpectedly that the grip on her weapon broke loose, and the next moment she was pulled beyond the door and sent hurtling through the air.

Even before she landed, she heard a loud popping sound and a distinctly quieter click as the sheep at the door pulled it shut and turned the key in the lock.

She allowed herself a quick glance before concentrating her attention on the animal by the door.  
The room was a strange mixture of laboratory and lounge:  
Several rows of tables with test tubes, burners and vials with different coloured substances were visible. In the corners were large pressure vessels, associated with different equipment in the room.  
And next to comfortable-looking chairs with old-fashioned lamp posts, were shelves with books on the walls.  
An open laptop stood in the corner on a desk with a picture of Nick getting back on his paws and yelling something into his radio.  
Next to it was a big pile of pizza boxes and empty bottles.

"Soso... The famous bunnycop... Let's see if you're actually capable of causing so much fear in an animal as they said. I really hope you don´t disappoint me."  
Bloodshot eyes, unkempt wool and a crumpled and dirty T-shirt testified that this sheep had apparently spent a lot of time in this lab.  
Most disturbing, however, was the broad grin.

"Ohhh... this will be sooooo good!"  
Without another word, the ram began to storm in Judy's direction to hit her with his horns.  
She had no problem avoiding him and after her roll, she made a long leap to the door to let Nick in. Judy then realized that the sheep had removed the key before he started his assault on her.

She had only a brief moment, but it was enough to show her that the door was much more stable than it looked from the outside.  
Especially when it didn´t even show a dent after his horns hit exactly where Judy had been standing before her sideways roll.  
So she had to take the key from him without being overrun.

>Easier thought than done.<

She thought about how best to knock him out when she dodged him three more times. At the same time he knocked over some of the superstructures that stood on the tables and with every single test tube destroyed there was the increasing risk that something really dangerous was in one.

She had not been in the room for a full minute, and yet the room was almost completely devastated. Except for a few dents in the walls, her attempts to knock himself out hadn´t been successful.  
Now she had only a few options left and she hoped that the next one would be crowned with success.

'I hope there's only hot water in there ...', she thought.  
The ram had just knocked over an entire work area with his ramming attempt and thus caused a rather large puddle of unknown substances when she had to position herself.  
Her plan was simple enough:  
Stand in front of one of the pressure boilers and dodge at the last second so that he would ram it…  
If he hit it just right, the boiler would burst.  
If it burst, the ram will be thrown back by the pressure.  
If the pressure was strong enough, he would hopefully hit the wall hard.  
If he hit the wall in the correct angle, he would be unconscious.  
That was way too many ‘if´s’ for Judy's taste...

The gaze of the ram briefly showed a hint of fear, before rushing back to her with a bloodcurdling scream.

Her plan failed.

Just at the moment she tried to dodge, she heard a voice:  
"Don´t forget that I want her alive!"

She could not help it, but her body stiffened, she looked away and saw a figure that froze her blood.  
"Bellweather?!"  
The next moment, she felt only pain as the horns of the ram hit her in the chest and threw her against the very same boiler she planned for the ram to hit to knock himself out.  
Judy knew only pain while she could only hear Bellweathers laugh before her vison went totally black. Her impact on the ground didn´t even register...

The first thing she felt was a terrible headache.  
As she awoke, she slowly became aware of her position:  
She lay on something hard, arms outstretched to the sides and her legs spread.  
She opened her eyes and was blinded by a garishly lamp above her.  
She wanted to block the light with her paw, but she did not succeed...  
She was tied up.  
Moments passed until her eyes were adjusted so far that she could look around.  
What she saw, she didn´t like at all...  
Judy was in a dark room, only in the area of the cone of light around was it possible to see anything.  
To her great concern, she suddenly discovered she was naked.  
Arms and legs were tied directly above the paws with steel clamps to her stretcher.  
"What…?"

"OH JUDY! I so glad that you are finally awake!"  
The sheep that stepped into the light was one of those animals she never really wanted to face again: Former Mayor Dawn Bellweather.

"We have not seen each other for such a long time! How are you? Good, I hope. How is your career going? And how about your love-life?"

"You should be in prison and not running around freely."

"But Judy! Do you always talk like that to an old friend that you haven´t seen in such a long time?!"

"We are not friends."

Dawn began to sniff in an overly artificial way.  
"But you owe it to me what you are today. If I had not been, you would never have got as far as you did!"

The look Bellweather was giving her sent ice down Judy’s back...  
"Why are not you in jail?"

"Judy, Judy, Judy..."  
She stepped closer and put her hoof on Judy’s shoulder.  
"... I have something to tell you: There are many animals in jail that do not like you as much as I do. But they helped me anyway. For that, I just had to promise them a tiny little thing."

"And what might that be?"

"Oh, that's a surprise!"  
She began to bounce and hit the hooves like a little lamb on her first funfair visit.  
"You can even choose it! I just have to prepare a little bit. Believe me: you'll be so surprised!"

With that Dawn stepped happily into the shadows beyond the beam of light and pulled out a large toolbox on wheels, and placed in such way that Judy could not see what was in it. She reached down and locked the wheels in place.

"Wait... where did I put it... Ah yes, there it is."  
She held up a shearing machine, with which sheep usually get rid of their excess wool.  
"And now: Please keep still. We do not want me to hurt you by mistake."

She came closer to Judy's right leg and put the clipper on her ankle, just above the shackle.  
"What's that supposed to be?!"  
She tried to shake off the device, but Dawn just pressed her free hoof on Judy's knee and kept her leg relatively still.  
"What kind of friend would I be if I did not let you enjoy your present to the fullest?!"  
"And what kind of gift is that you have to shear me?!"  
The sheep looked up with a broad, far-too cheerful grin.  
"I said already: It's a surprise. And now shut up, please."

She did not like it at all, but she could not do anything at the moment except to try to buy time through her fighting so Nick could find her.

Slowly but surely, Dawn managed to completely free her right leg from fur, but not without leaving some minor cuts.  
"Just because you do not keep calm."

About ten minutes later, her left leg was free of fur too.

"If you don´t keep still now, then this will really hurt."  
She put the clipper directly between her legs and this was enough to keep Judy quiet, at least for the moment.  
"Thanks. That makes everything so much easier and, above all, painless."  
Almost timidly she led the clipper up, over her stomach, between the rows of breasts to her neck.  
"Wonderful. Did not hurt at all, right?"  
Then she put the clipper on her abdomen again and removed the next lane.  
She continued until Judy's entire upper body was free on the front.  
She even took a lot of time around her nipples to make sure she really caught every single hair.

"Now your arms."  
Here Judy suffered some cuts through her resistance, but these were purely superficial like the others.

"Wonderful! Now we have to do something about those ugly red bloodstains."  
She went back to her trolley and swapped the shaving machine for a bucket with a damp washcloth, and began to wash Judy from her arms down to her feet.  
"Oh. Is this scar from the tusk in the Natural History Museum? The wound was obviously deeper than it looked."  
Shearing her was already uncomfortable, but when this sheep run her hooves over her body, even if it was with a warm washcloth, it was many times worse.

"Perfect."  
Dawn looked at her work and clapped her hooves.

"Now we come to the most important part of our preparations!"  
With that she stepped beside Judy and pulled out more straps on the side of her stretcher, which she stretched over her upper body, thus further restricting her freedom of movement.  
After that she went back to her toolbox and took two wide belts from it.

"Ready?"  
"For what?!"  
Dawn did not answer, but grinned broadly and stepped between Judy's thighs. She held one of the straps briefly between her teeth while loosely fitting the other strap high around Judy’s right thigh and repeating it on her other side.

Judy watched the sheep and tried to understand what was happening.

She grabbed another belt and put it around her left arm, right at the shoulder.  
"So. Now we are ready to start!"

"… With what?"  
"Oh. I'm sure you're smart enough to figure it out yourself. "  
Before Judy could react, the sheep pulled the strap on her arm with a beaming, wide smile painfully tight and despite all restraint Judy couldn´t prevent her muzzle from showing a grimace.  
Dawns smile became even wider as she repeated this with the straps on Judy's legs.

Judy looked at the places where the straps cut into the flesh of her arm and legs.  
Arm, leg, leg.  
Arm, leg, leg.  
Arm, leg, leg.  
Her nose started to twitch.  
Her eyes opened wide.  
Her breath quickened.  
Her heart began to race.  
She remembered the first aid courses she had to attend as part of her annual refresher courses...

"Oh yeah! I see your mind is as sharp as ever. I know why I still admire you so much."

"You are sick!"

"Judy! That´s not nice. At least, it is not as if I wanted to kill you or anything like that as the others had wanted it...  
They are so uncultivated. An animal just needs talent to properly practice such an art form."

She could already feel the tingling in her extremities.  
"Darling, you're probably wondering why I did not do that on your right arm."

Judy struggled to not to show any panic. She didn’t want to give Bellweather the satisfaction. But it was becoming harder by the minute.

"You still need that for your present! But ... THAT is still a surprise! Oh, I'm so excited about how you’ll react!"

"But we still have to kill some time. Why don´t you tell me a little bit about you and Nick? I'm sure you're crazy about your hard piece of fox meat!"  
She did not want to think about it at the moment, but the sheep at her side made it difficult for her.  
>I... what would he think?... NO!<  
As much as she tried, there were scenes in her mind as he would look at her...  
How he would turn away in disgust...

Her heart began to beat even faster and it got harder to breathe.

"The body of a rabbit is amazing. Did you know that the consequences of this with such a fast metabolism are irreversible in less than an hour?"  
Of course, Judy knew this. Even before she got her badge, all members of her family had first aid courses and regular updates. After all, much could happen on such a big farm.

"I guess that the tingling should have abated already?"  
She did not want to think about what it would mean if Nick did not arrive in time, but now she felt only a terrible cold from her legs and arm.

"Oh! Shall I tell you something great?"  
Without waiting for an answer, she ran back to her toolbox and pulled out a smartphone.  
"Look ... I put a little device near the lab a while ago."  
Then she held the display to Judy's nose and in it, the building in which she and Nick had found the lab was visible.  
The building was ablaze with flames and in a nearby ambulance she recognized a fox with a hanging head and a blanket around the shoulders.  
"He's fine and he's still there!"

When Judy looked confused at the sheep, she continued.  
"You should know that there was a small explosion after you lost consciousness and he was really heroically trying to get you out of the lab. But the door did not give way. So he had to be dragged out by two colleagues."

She looked around as if to make sure they were not overheard before she leaned down to Judy's ear and whispered something to her.  
"We are on the other side of the city and I could call him now and say where he could find you... but he would not make it in time!"

Dawn Bellweather clenched her hooves in front of her chest and hopped a bit.  
"Isn´t this day really great?"

No matter how hard she tried, she could not hold back the tears.  
She was already painfully clenching her eyes, but it didn´t help.

"But Judy..."  
She put a hoof on her victim's cheek and wiped away a tear.  
"... no reason to cry. You will see him again. Let´s see. Maybe in a few hours?"  
Reluctantly, her eyes went to her legs and she could see clearly that they had already discolored.  
She first thought that Bellweather had sheared her to humiliate her, but she had to realize that the only reason was to let her watch as it got worse and worse.

"I just can´t stand to see a friend crying."  
Dawn snapped and smiled at Judy again.  
"I know what will cheer you up! MUSIC!"  
She typed on her smartphone and after a few moments Judy's favorite song filled the air: Try everything!  
"Go Judy! Swing the hooves!  
I messed up tonight..."

Even though the 'dance' was far from cheering her up, she could not help but fix her gaze on the sheep's legs through the countless repeats of the song...

Judy had lost all sense of time and wanted nothing more than to avert her gaze.  
"Phew... I feel really out of breath, but my mood is so much better now."

Dawn saw Judy and looked confused.  
"Judy! What is wrong with you? Dancing always helps me when I'm in a bad mood. There's no reason to cry."  
She had not noticed how her tears flowed unhindered, but also how a terrible whimper escaped from her throat.

She was finally able to avert her gaze, and her heart almost stopped beating as she saw the now-black flesh that was once her legs.  
Now it was no longer whimpering, but a full convulsion that tore through her.  
Judy could not help it, every attempt only made it worse.

It felt like an eternity, but at some point she couldn´t cry anymore and it faded, though the cause was still there.  
"Look here! Is that not impressive?"  
Her eyes turned involuntarily to her tormentor. She had a big, shiny knife in her hooves.  
She held it over what was once Judy's right calf and let it slowly slide inside.  
"Here! Look!  
Virtually no resistance!  
I sat for hours and honed and polished it until it was just right.  
It goes through flesh like a hot wire through butter and through bone just like it was a carrot!  
And you don´t even feel anything!"  
She pulled it out again, and there was no sign of anything but a slight fouling.

"And now to the finale before my present!"  
Dawn stepped op to Judy's left side, slipping the tip a tiny bit down into the dark flesh of her arm. She grazed the belt and severed it to about a third.  
She repeated this with the straps on Judy's legs.

"So. Now for your really wonderful gift. "  
The sheep put the knife across Judy's legs and stepped back into the shadows, only to return to Judy's side with a transparent, folding partition.  
She placed it between the rabbit and her toolbox, so she could sit and watch the action without fear being struck by any liquids or projectiles coming from the bunny’s direction.

"You know... These straps are quite old... It is hard to believe how stable they can still be good in spite of their age. Nevertheless, if they are inadvertently damaged, they can tear from one to the next moment...  
I'm sure in your classes, they have told you what happens when you reopen a tied limb without thinking...  
I'll call Nick right away and tell him where he can find you.  
Unfortunately, I do not know if he will be here in time.  
If I think about traffic, then at best it might take 45 to 50 minutes to get here.  
After the call I will open your shackles.

Then the decision is entirely up to you:  
Will you take the knife and get rid of those time-bombs of arm and legs, so that you may survive as a broken bunny?  
…Unable to be a cop and so disgustingly-disfigured that your oh-so-handsome fox can´t even look at you without feeling sick?

Or will you try to take revenge on me and probably cause one or more of the straps to break during this action, so that you will suffer a slow and painful death?  
In that case, I'd like to see the veins in your body slowly-but-surely fill with the black blood as it sneaks through your body.  
Would you try to destroy me for good or try to arrest me?

I will be interested to see what you decide!"

She sat behind the glass on her cart, picked up her smartphone and dialed a number.  
"Hi, Nick!  
...  
How are you?  
...  
Oh, that's not nice. Especially since your sweet honeybunny is here with me.  
...  
Come on now. I don´t intend to kill her.  
...  
I can prove it to you."

She took a picture of Judy's muzzle and then continued talking.

"OK. She's not in perfect condition, but I 'm not going to kill her. This decision is up to her. You just have to come here and pick her up.  
...  
Yes. I know that the call is being traced. They may have just pressed a note with my address in your paw.  
...  
Just come here. I'm looking forward to seeing you two meet again. Bye."

She put her phone away, took a small remote control in her hooves and pushed a button.  
No sooner had she done so, the shackles to Judy’s paws opened and she moved her right arm reflexively to her chest.  
Judy opened the straps to release her upper body and froze as she was held back at the shoulder by an unfamiliar, heavy, and cold piece of meat.

"Oh Judy, I'm sorry, but I forgot the last option..."  
Judy looked at Dawn Bellweather and she had a big grin and a bag of popcorn in her hooves...  
"... You could also take the easy way and use the knife higher up."  
She pushed a piece of popcorn into her maw, and chewed it happily.

Judy loathed Bellweather, but her chest tightened as this option suddenly had a certain appeal.

She blinked several times and out of nowhere she held the knife in her paw and looked at herself in the reflecting surface...

She saw a wreck.

Why was the simple solution of giving up just so tempting?

"Oh, that tension! She is hardly bearable!"

She had lost everything.  
Crippled in this magnitude she will be incapable of being a cop.  
Nick had said more than once how much he admired her strong legs.  
Her eyes went to the now useless pieces of flesh on her hip.  
But this would be over now.  
She really had nothing left...  
But…  
One last thing was still left...

She began to really observe her surroundings again, even if that was not much.  
Judy glanced at her reflection, watching Bellweather's behavior out of the corner of her eye...

"Oh, please decide... He'll be right here. Only... wait...”  
She looked at her smartphone to note the exact time and that was the moment Judy had been waiting for…  
The last half-hour since she had made her plan, she had mentally and emotionally prepared herself for what she had to do now.

She averted her eyes and let the knife pass through her arm and straight through her legs.  
Judy took advantage of the movement to immediately roll off of the stretcher, grab it where her right arm was shackled and swung beside the protective, transparent wall.  
The impact was hard and extremely painful, but Dawn Bellweather obviously hadn´t been expecting it.  
Then Judy threw the knife with all the strength she could muster.  
The sheep tried to jump from her toolbox and behind it to take cover, but the knife, sharp enough to tore through meat, muscles and bone, went (thanks to Judy's powerful throw) through both Bellweather’s knees and the sheep went down.  
"… You're… under arrest…"  
"No! No! No! No! No! Not that way!"  
The sheep tried to escape into the shadows, but was stopped.

A door was opened violently and several silhouettes entered. But only one was important to her...  
Pointy ears, long muzzle, bushy tail...  
"JUDY!"

"... Nick..."  
Shock was not even close to what his snout expressed, yet he didn´t hesitate and within a few heartbeats, he was at her side and pressing her battered body to him.

She was getting more and more gloomy and her head fell against his chest. Then she saw what had happened to her:  
Where she had landed after her swing, the remnants of the two torn scraps from her legs were lying there, and the great pool of blood made it clear that help had come too late.  
The black and dead piece of meat that was the rest of her right leg fall off the stretcher and provided a sickening picture…

"... Thanks only... to you... I could not... give up..."  
She fought with all her strength, but she could not stop her vision turning black...  
At least the pain was easing…

"Judy! Don’t leave me!"  
Part of her wondered why the pain was suddenly getting stronger again.  
Also, her ribcage felt strangely small...  
Although... That was not entirely correct:  
He was getting smaller repeatedly...

"Judy! Please! Please! Please! Do not leave me!"  
Also, why was Nick's voice suddenly louder again?

"Judy! You promised to not leave me!"  
Now she not only felt the pressure on her chest, but also a paw that exerted pressure ...

"Judy! Do not leave me! I beg you!"  
"CLAWHAUSER! WHERE IS THAT GODDAMNED AMBULANCE?"

She used all her reserves to open her eyes just a crack and saw...  
Nick.  
Nick, as he towered over her, paws on top of each other and repeatedly putting pressure on her chest...  
Almost like a...  
"... Ni... ck..."

The fox above her froze and looked down on her with teary eyes.  
"JUDY"  
He pressed her body against his chest.  
She did not even try to hold back her tears and wrapped her right arm around his neck...  
"Nick!"  
"Judy! When the ram closed the door, I was already afraid of the worst!"  
"… What?"

She looked around and strangely, she found she was back in front of the lab.  
But how did they get here?  
"When I finally opened the door you were lying in a pool of some kind of liquid coolant. Your head and right arm fortunately landed on one of the overturned chairs. I do not know if you could have survived that if your muzzle had landed in it! I already thought that I had lost you! You were in cardiac arrest! You were... ... dead..."  
Nick picked her up and she realized with a curious mixture of shock and relief that her left arm and her legs were still in place. Although numb... and undressed...  
"My ... uniform ...?"  
"It was soaked in that coolant or whatever it was. If you had kept it on, you would probably have suffered from frostbite."

She thought her heart would explode with joy, realizing that this experience was just an absolutely bloodcurdling, terrible nightmare.

"Nick! The ambulance will be with you in about a minute!"  
Rather than answer, he picked up his uniform jacket on which Judy (until a few moments ago) had been lying, and put it around her, pressing her body to him as he ran down the hall, up the stairs and out the door.

When he stepped into the street, his colleagues' patrol cars came to a standstill with screeching tires, and in the few seconds till the ambulance turned the corner, he gave his colleagues an extremely brief summary of the events.

The driver had to brake very hard so that the fox and his partner would not be their next patient, but he had already opened the side door and jumped in.  
"Give it the gas, buddy! To the hospital!"

A jolt went through the ambulance when the driver did just that and Nick fell forward. But he turned so that he would catch Judy's impact with his own body before he put her on the stretcher and made room for the paramedic.  
"What happened?"  
"The perp dragged her to his lab and apart from rumble and crashes, I didn´t see anything. When I managed to open the door after a few minutes, she lay in a pool of an unknown fluid. Since it was damn cold maybe a kind of coolant for the equipment in the lab."  
Nick opened his shirt and pressed her icy feet to his stomach and winced.

"The culprit had collapsed at the door.  
I checked his pulse, but found nothing. With her I did.  
I took her out, removed the soaked clothes and then she suffered cramps and a cardiac arrest."  
In the last sentence, even the paramedic saw the shock and pain of Nick.

"I immediately started resuscitation and after... I'm not sure... a minute or so, her heart started beating again and she regained consciousness."

"Very well done, Officer."  
He started his examination and soon found that she was obviously stable.

"... legs... so... cold..."

Without hesitating, he sat down on the stretcher, lifted the blanket the paramedic had placed over her, lifted her legs up, pressed them fully to his chest and wrapped his bushy tail around her.  
Of course, not without grimacing, because her legs were freezing cold as her paws before, before wrapping the blanket around his torso to give Judy as much warmth as possible.  
The paramedic allowed himself a small smile.  
These two will undoubtedly give the nurses in the hospital a lot of migraines...

Subsequent investigations revealed that the sheep was a chemical genius trying to develop a gas that would cause the deepest fears and cause death for the victims trough cardiac arrest.  
He was on the verge of cracking the secret, but he breathed in the random mix created during the fight as well as Judy, and did not survive it.  
The doctors suspect that it may be because she was unconscious, or that she had ended up in the coolant that was quickly absorbed by her clothes, or that Nick had taken immediate action when Judy's heart stopped.

But two things were certain:  
Dawn Bellweather was still in jail.  
And Judy had developed a new understanding of things that most took for granted. Things like simply walking from one point to another. Or Nick's claws on her thighs whenever no one was looking...


End file.
